


White Lies

by Loudest_Voice



Series: MCU One-shots [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Allusions to Gaynst, Blind Character, Dating, F/M, Law School, M/M, Pre - Canon, Secrets, Unintentional Violation of Privacy, Unrequited Love, super senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5099168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's impossible to have a secret crush on Matt Murdock. But Matt has no way of letting anyone know about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Lies

**Author's Note:**

> I went about this a little backwards. My plan is to rewatch the series, but somehow I wrote this first.

Matt Murdock can’t say with certainty how often people lie. Sometimes, the fibs flow so comfortably that even his senses can’t pick them up. Mostly, it happens with the little white lies, the ones people don’t feel guilty about because they’re meant to spare people’s feelings.

“Does this dress make me look fat?” he hears a girl sitting in front of him ask.

“N-no,” comes the answer, the hesitation so subtle that Matt barely hears it.

No guilt there, he knows. No point in telling the truth either.

Silence is easier to read. People want to say things often, but shame or fear makes their throats spasm and their hearts flutter. Sometimes, Matt isn’t sure what’s causing the nervousness. Maybe there are details he can’t see in his red volcano of awareness, or maybe he’s just more fallible than he would like to admit.

Foggy swims in a sea of clenched throats, loud swallows, and fluttering heartbeats from the moment Matt meets him in their dorm room. At first, Matt assumes it has to do with the cane and the glasses, with the brief moment of clumsiness Matt can’t help but fake whenever he meets a new person.

It doesn’t seem to get better with time as it does with most people once they realize Matt isn’t someone to be pitied. Foggy seems nice enough, funny when he’s not trying too hard, and genuinely decent. Matt had been afraid of landing himself in a room with some bastard born in the lap of luxury. Foggy’s anything but, and his running commentary makes dealing with them a little easier.

“Can you believe that asshole, MacMitchell?” Foggy complains after a class discussion on the constitutionality of anti-hate speech legislation. “Does he really think that in Libertarian Randian Utopia--and who the fuck thinks Rand makes sense after eighth grade, honestly?--that his family’s shitty department stores would be still in business?”

“He probably thinks they’d be richer,” says Matt.

“Asshole,” mutters Foggy.

Matt’s ice cream cone is melting. He could lick the cream that’s about to drip down his hand, but realistically, Matt shouldn’t notice. Little details like that remind people that Matt is blind, so he likes to let them pass. The cream falls on the inside of his wrist. Matt licks it off, then brings the cone to his mouth and envelops the scoop with his lips.

Foggy’s heart does the fluttery thing.

Something niggles at the back of Matt’s mind, but he foregoes analyzing it. He’s getting along with Foggy well enough. There’s no need to fix something that isn’t broken.

The year continues. Matt goes to class, learns not to be insulted when pity makes women flock to him like he’s a broken bird.

“Make the best of it, man,” Foggy tells him, but he sounds acrid to Matt’s sensitive ears.

But it’s not bad advice. Matt is a young man after all, and devout Catholic or not, he sees no reason not to enjoy the company of beautiful women. Although, he has a different selection rubric than Foggy.

“Lena’s gorgeous,” says Foggy as they leave a class on the legalities of self-defense. “Her tits are bigger than my face.”

“She has a scratchy voice.”

“Who cares about her _voice_?”

“I have sensitive ears.” More sensitive than Foggy can comprehend.

He hears Foggy’s breath hitch with every dating encouragement he offers Matt. They don’t sound sincere, but Matt can’t work out why. It’s something deeper than standard jealousy.

The first girl Matt takes on a date is not one who inspires Foggy to compose tawdry poems. But Melissa’s voice is soothing, she wears mostly cotton, and her soap is plain. Her goal is to become a defense attorney and return to Compton, where a dearth of resources makes innocent people take unfair plea deals. She never offers to do things for Matt, or reacts like a wounded puppy on the odd moments that she forgets his limitation.

“So lilac, or boring gray?” Melissa asks him as she rummages through her closet before an interview with a potential mentor.

“I’m probably not the best to ask about colors,” says Matt, readying himself for a stream of profuse, self-flagellating apologies.

“I know you can’t see them,” dismisses Melissa. “But you know what most people say about business suits, right? Gray or black, everything else is for the night club. But I look so good in lilac.”

“I say, be bold.” It’s the first time that being with Melissa makes him float. Well, outside of sex.

Like most good things in Matt’s life, it doesn’t last long. Melissa’s intelligent, so much so that she sees through Matt’s careless facade of helplessness.

“Sometimes, I get this weird idea that you’re not really blind,” she says when Matt catches a bowl of lettuce that had been about to fall off her kitchen counter.

“I just heard it,” says Matt.

“Yes, of course,” says Melissa. “You feel like ranch or thousand island?”

But Matt’s on guard after that joke, though he can’t even say why. Would it be so terrible if Melissa knew the extent of his hearing?

Of course it would be. No one wants to be with someone they can’t ever lie to.

Melissa senses the wall he puts up and sooner rather than later, she says she can’t be in a relationship with someone who treats her like . . . and her voice trembles, so Matt knows she’s doubting herself, but. But she can’t be with someone who treats her like an opponent.

“It’ll get easier with time,” Foggy tries to comfort him, but his voice is off. His tone light, like he’s . . . relieved. “Why don’t we go bar hopping? One nail gets rid of another, or however that saying goes.”

“No,” says Matt. “I want to be alone for awhile.”

And that’s when Foggy’s heart stutters. Matt doesn’t much care.

He’s careful about his dates after Melissa. The exclusion criteria expands to include women who wear textured fabric, women who like perfume, women with oddly-pitched voices, women who breathe too loudly, women who are a little too into his supposed blindness, and women he thinks he might really, really like. It cuts down his dates considerably, but Foggy still sounds bitter.

“Why does it bother you so much?” Matt asks one day.

“U-uh.” Foggy’s heartbeat doesn’t just flutter, it jackhammers in his chest like Matt just caught him . . . caught him. “Ignore me man. I’m just a jealous asshole.”

Bitter. So bitter that Matt considers fighting, except Foggy’s a great roommate, jealousy about the girls aside.

Foggy never quite gets over the bitterness about Matt’s dating, but he makes an honest effort to hide his feelings. Or at least tone them down to goodnatured, boys-will-be-boys type of ribbing. The only reason Matt can tell it genuinely bothers him is his heartbeat, and how can Foggy control that? For the sake of peace, Matt decides that the pretension will have to be enough.

Things settle down. Matt learns to keep his ladykiller exploits removed from Foggy as much as possible, and their friendship resumes. They make great study partners, and Foggy includes Matt in many of his family trips. Matt feels like a vulture feasting on family warmth that’s not his due at first, but Foggy’s family is infectious. They call him Foggy’s law school brother, and Matt feels it, at least until he hears Foggy’s heartbeat groaning at the proclamation.

Well, Matt can’t hold that against him. If Foggy has some feelings he’s not ready to share, then what right does Matt have to push it?

It’s not until their second year of law school that Matt figures out what the Foggy’s heart stutter means. Or, it’s not until the second year when he lets himself truly hear it.

They’ve pulled their resources together and moved from a cramped dorm to a proper apartment with a bathroom. Matt forgets his towel one day and has to walk through the kitchen naked, an apology ready in case Foggy’s around.

Foggy _is_ around. His heart starts fluttering when Matt steps into the living room.

Only a lifetime of pretending to be blind stops Matt from revealing himself, from rushing out with a generic apology that he forgot his towel. So Matt walks in tentative steps; not too much since they’ve been in the apartment for some time, but it’s not like he can just run to his room.

And Foggy stares at him, heart hammering, no offer to help his poor blind friend. There’s nothing that should garner that reaction, nothing except for Matt being naked and dripping wet, and why would Foggy care about that?

In his room, towel in hand and drying himself off, Matt admits it to himself. Foggy is attracted to him. Attracted to him sexually. It’s actually obvious.

Matt’s not sure what to think about that. He feels a little betrayed that Foggy didn’t . . . well, it would’ve been awkward, Matt can admit. They were roommates, then they were friends. And Matt is Catholic. He hopes Foggy doesn’t assume he’d be homophobic about it. Although, it probably says something not entirely nice about him that he was completely blind to the possibility until happenstance led him to parade naked in front of Foggy.

No pun intended.

Much to Matt’s delight, the revelation about Foggy’s situational fluttering smooths out any rough corners in their relationship. Matt knows where Foggy’s anxiety comes from now, and it has nothing to do with him. Well, it does, but it’s not anything bad. He’s knows it’s not an even relationship they have, but Matt can’t have an even relationship with anyone. There will always be too many secrets on his part, and not enough on his partners’.

“You know,” Foggy says to him during a rainy day. Matt can barely hear him over the cacophony of the raindrops hitting the ground. “Sometimes I think you know something I don’t.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Matt, coaching himself against the reflex to shout to be heard over the noise. “I don’t know anything.”

It's a white lie.

**Author's Note:**

> My blog is [here](http://dynamicallyopposed.blogspot.com/). Insightful brilliant thoughts about this series pending.


End file.
